How have the Americans once again managed to fool Afghanistan and the entire world with the myths of "inter-Taliban contradictions"?
By Abdool Naser Noorzad, Security and Geopolitical Researcher, especially for Sangar
The US game with the Taliban shows its true face. Our understanding of the analysis of the situation in post-American Afghanistan was incorrect for two reasons: first, we were too optimistic in our assessment of the intentions and goals of the US and the international community, which follows Washington's orders on critical global issues. Second, we were somewhat superficial in our understanding that the Taliban is divided into two parts: one pursues regional interests, and the other trans-regional interests, and that the conflict between them is between the region and the trans-region.
Now that the main side of the destructive security policy of the US and its allies in Afghanistan has been revealed, it can be concluded that the Taliban served the interests of the US completely and that our delusion about the existence of contradictions between them was a deceptive and misleading perception. As a result, the mistaken opinion arose that we waited three and a half years not only for the situation in Afghanistan to change under the influence of external factors, but also for internal upheavals among the Taliban to free Afghanistan from the evil of this petrified group. What we did not understand correctly is that the Taliban has its boss or owner. Will the owner, who has invested in this brutal and terrorist group for years, allow all his investments in this strategic asset to be wasted? If we had found this answer in advance, we might have been slightly mistaken in today's analysis of the situation.
We have also been deeply confused by the misunderstanding of analytical factors that may have seemed simple in analyzing the current situation, and this perception has led to a reductionist and simplistic analysis that has been deliberately implanted in our minds by the enemy through combined and psychological warfare.
Now that light has been shed on the Taliban-US relationship, and the powerful intelligence and adventurist presence of Washington's partners in Afghanistan under the Taliban, we must understand our mistakes and take the issue seriously.
First, we should not expect the US and the West to support us in the fight against the Taliban. Second, we must take a very critical look at the role of the region in the future development of Afghanistan. Just as we have made strategic mistakes due to misconceptions and illusions about the US during its 20-year presence in Afghanistan, we have forgotten about the region as a whole and imagined that the US will forever remain our supporter and help us keep our seats, our positions, and the riches that fell from the sky.
Now that we are not supported by the Americans and are not in power, the region has every right to be so indifferent to us. Let us ask ourselves how many times a year we went to the embassies of the USA, UK, and EU and accepted their invitations as a favor to us, and how many times and how did we accept invitations from the embassies of our neighboring countries?
In any case, we are saying that the Taliban phenomenon cannot be separated from the security interests of the great powers. The Taliban, with their unusual interpretation of religion, as well as ethnic and linguistic limitations, have become a rather repressive, authoritarian, and intolerant force in the domestic space. They must become a political force that serves as a saving recipe for bringing Afghanistan out of its current isolation.
However, the shortcoming of our analysis of the last three years has been that we have looked more at the Taliban phenomenon, its policies and actions from the point of view of values and norms than at the principle of the existential and philosophical nature of the creation of this group. We have concluded that the Taliban movement must be dismantled by the international community and, in the context of domestic conditions, replaced by a more open and moderate alternative.
But in principle, why is this the case when the instrumental view of the powers towards the Taliban elements has been very selfish, punitive, and opportunistic? For example, China has been able to use the Taliban presence for its security, political, and economic interests, as well as for geopolitical purposes. While Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Turkey, and the Arab countries, as well as the countries of Central Asia and the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and the United States have also followed the same path to ensure their interests. However, such an element of apparent simplicity, which lies in the basis and nature of intelligence programs and plans influenced by geopolitical interests, should not be analyzed so clearly, and its conclusions turned into a simple and controversial fact.
Now the Taliban must choose one option in a narrow space caused by the geopolitical rivalry of the great powers. A difficult and even decisive choice. In other words, alongside the security agendas of the great powers, the group can maintain itself as a coherent entity committed to the obligations and interests of the great powers and remain an ideological group, becoming an inevitable element in the web of these rivalries. Is this possible in practice? Will the Taliban’s masters give the group a choice?
Over the past three years, the Taliban has repeatedly demonstrated a strong desire to strengthen its ties with Western, regional, and trans-regional countries. This desire was not an internal choice or a choice of the roadmap chosen by the group, but rather a command from the United States and its allies, which played an active role in the group’s rise to power, paving the way for it to become a political group through soft politics and engagement. It is in this context that there is active propaganda about the changing of Taliban and adopting the principles of understanding, tolerance to take the group out of the confines of a military and insurgency and turn it into a globally acceptable political group.
Not only do the Taliban have no strategic choice in such situations, but they are a strategic tool serving the interests of the United States. Thus, the question is not whether the Taliban will decide to choose in favor of their interests, but whether great powers such as the United States decide what policy to pursue towards specific forces and at what point in time. This is why the Taliban was created, came to power, and was removed from power again.
During the twenty years of the presence of the United States and its allies, they were revived, and later all the necessary conditions were created for the exercise of their political power. Now the United States must decide how long the Taliban will remain in power and how they will be removed from power. Of course, the role of regional countries in the remobilization of the Taliban cannot be ignored. China, Russia, Iran, and each of them, depending on the level of their influence on this group, have used this tactic to protect their vital interests. However, the power and influence of these regional powers cannot be compared with the influence and dominance of the United States over the Taliban. The Taliban, given that it is a project, has a dynamic nature. The change of faces, tactics and policies, slogans, and goals - everything revolves around the goals of these projects, for which this group was created.
Now, if there is news in the US Embassy in Kabul, then it all fits into the framework of Washington's calculations. But the point is not that the region, especially the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians, are unaware of this problem and the new US moves in Afghanistan. No, the problem is the use of tactics that are used by prominent players in the Afghan issue. In short, maintaining the status quo in the tactical policy of the region is to prevent the security crisis in Afghanistan caused by foreign intervention from spreading beyond its borders, and changing the status quo based on the roadmap of destabilization is one of the key goals of the trans-region to involve the region in a comprehensive security crisis, the source of which is Afghanistan. The Taliban play the role of a pawn in this conflict and have no right to choose.
